Italian man who had a sex change says he and his wife want to remain married,
takes case to the Constitutional Court

An Italian man who had a sex change to become a woman is challenging the Italian state's refusal to allow him to stay married to his wife.

Alessandro Bernaroli, a bank employee now known as Alessandra, insists that he and his wife of nine years are still very much in love and want to remain married, despite the fact that he switched gender.

His wife, also called Alessandra, says she too wants to stay married despite now finding herself living with a woman.

The couple got married in 2005 after a long courtship but Alessandro says that he hid the fact that he felt trapped inside a man’s body and desperately wanted to be a woman.

He finally opened up to his wife, who was shocked but eventually agreed to support him as he underwent a sex change, with operations carried out in Thailand.

The Bernarolis, who are from Bologna in northern Italy, took their case to the courts after their local council ruled that when they tried to renew their identity cards, they could no longer be identified as married.

The unusual case has now reached the Constitutional Court in Rome, which began its deliberations this week.

"My body may have changed, but the love between us remains the same. I’m acting to defend our marriage," Alessandro/Alessandra, 43, told La Repubblica newspaper on Wednesday.

“I fell in love with her nearly 20 years ago when I was a man and we love each other as much as the first day we met, despite the fact that after a long journey and many operations I became a woman. Why should the state now try to separate us?”

He had felt confused about his sexuality since a very young age.

“When I was small I liked to play with little girls, I was looking to understand their femininity. I dreamed of becoming a woman but I had no idea what trans-sexuality was. “There was no internet then and it was very hard for a boy from the provinces to find out this sort of information.”

He had tried to blank out his feelings about his sexuality for years. “I hid my inner torment from my wife but I felt trapped in a prison, in a body that had become an enemy to me. I suffocated my true identity.”

He is determined to fight the case until the very end. “The law in Italy says one can dissolve a marriage in the event of a sex change, not that one must do so.”

The court in Rome will now rule on whether the state’s refusal to recognise the marriage is unconstitutional.

“We hope that they will take into account the peculiarity of our case,” said the bank worker, adding that if the Constitutional Court’s decision went against him he would refer the case to the European Court of Human Rights.